Top White House aide Stephen Miller said on May 29 that the Trump administration is aiming to significantly increase the number of daily arrests of illegal immigrants in an effort to reverse years of mass illegal immigration into the country.
Miller said that more arrests are needed to remove illegal immigrants who were “unchecked” and “unvetted” because they have committed crimes against Americans.
Trump and Miller, the White House’s deputy chief of staff and leading architect of Trump’s immigration policy, have sought to deport record numbers of illegal immigrants, although the administration has said that a number of federal judges across the country are slowing down their efforts. ICE guidance issued earlier in 2025 directed officers to consider all those previously released for expedited removal if they had not affirmatively applied for asylum.
After taking office in January, Trump launched an immigration enforcement campaign and declared an invasion in a bid to increase deportations. He also declared an emergency at the U.S.–Mexico border and deployed military assets there to prevent further border crossings, which had surged under the previous administration.
Trump invoked the Alien Enemies Act in March to rapidly deport Venezuelan gang members, but the U.S. Supreme Court issued an order in April that called for possible deportees to have a chance to contest the removal.
Earlier in May, Miller told reporters that the White House was considering suspending habeas corpus to speed up deportations of illegal immigrants. Habeas corpus is a legal doctrine providing that individuals can challenge the legality of their detention or arrest before a judge.
“The Constitution is clear, and that, of course, is the supreme law of the land, that the privilege of the writ of habeas corpus can be suspended at a time of invasion,“ Miller said at the White House on May 9. ”So I would say that’s an action we’re actively looking at.”
U.S. District Judge Indira Talwani wrote in her order: “This court emphasizes, as it did in its prior order, that it is not in the public interest to manufacture a circumstance in which hundreds of thousands of individuals will, over the course of several months, become unlawfully present in the country, such that these individuals cannot legally work in their communities or provide for themselves and their families.”
The number of illegal immigrants caught crossing the U.S. southern border has plummeted to record lows in recent months. U.S. Border Patrol officials arrested 8,400 individuals who were crossing illegally in April, down from a monthly high of 250,000 in December 2023 under Biden.
